There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people.

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.

This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out; that you will never become a different man.

Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?

..., twice two is four is not life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!